A new study looks at public school systems across the country and ranks Maryland fifth in the nation.
WalletHub, a personal finance website, compared all 50 states and the District of Columbia based on 32 key measures of school quality and safety. They included math and reading test scores, number of students taking advanced placement exams, school safety, and number of blue ribbon schools per capita.
Maryland ranked 6th for school safety and 7th for quality.
The states ranked higher than Maryland are Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Virginia.
Some of Maryland’s other neighbors ranked in the top 30: Delaware (6th), Pennsylvania (18th), and the District of Columbia (30th).
Some researchers find that more resources dedicated to the public schools typically result in better school-system performance. The graph below ranks the school systems and the amount spent on public schools per student.
Data used to create this ranking were collected from the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Education, National Conference of State Legislatures, National Center for Education Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative, Education Commission of the States, U.S. News & World Report, College Board, Ballotpedia, ACT, State Educational Technology Directors Association, Civil Rights Data Collection and Zendrive.
For more information about this study, click here.
